Washington
Fox News sends Tucker Carlson ‘cease-and-desist’ letter over Twitter series
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fox News sent Tucker Carlson a “cease-and-desist” letter over his new Twitter series, Axios reported Monday, amid reports of a contract battle between the conservative network and its former prime-time host.
Carlson was ousted from Fox in late April, less than a week after Fox agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems nearly $800 million to settle an explosive defamation case. The network provided no explanation for the firing, but a wave of reports on damming text messages and other statements Carlson made during his time at Fox have since piled up.
Since leaving Fox, Carlson kicked off a “Tucker on Twitter” series — arguing that Twitter was “the only” major remaining platform that allows free speech as he denounced news media. The series, which has published two episodes so far, has appeared to escalate contract tensions between Carlson and Fox.
Fox has demanded Carlson to stop posting videos to Twitter, The New York Times also reported Monday — as the network’s lawyers accuse Carlson of violating his contract, which runs until early 2025 and restricts his ability to appear on other media outlets. Meanwhile, Carlson’s lawyers have said the network breached the contract first.
A spokesperson for Fox News Media and attorneys representing Carlson, Bryan Freedman and Harmeet Dhillon, did not immediately return The Associated Press’ requests for comments on Tuesday.
“Doubling down on the most catastrophic programming decision in the history of the cable news industry, Fox is now demanding that Tucker Carlson be silent until after the 2024 election,” Dhillon said in a statement sent to Axios and the Times. “Tucker will not be silenced by anyone.”
Before his April firing, Carlson was Fox’s top-rated host. His stew of grievances and political theories grew to define the network over recent years and made him an influential, and widely controversial, force in GOP politics.
Carlson has previously come under fire for defending a white-supremacist theory that claims white people are being “replaced” by people of color, as well as spreading misinformation about issues ranging from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
New Hampshire
Judge dismisses charges against man shot by state troopers
OSSIPEE, N.H. (AP) — A judge has dismissed multiple charges against a man who was wounded during a confrontation with three state troopers in 2019.
The charges, including criminal threatening and reckless conduct, were dismissed against John Swanson, 57, following a competency hearing, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office said in a news release Monday.
He had been charged by the Carroll County Attorney’s office after police said he had threatened them and that they heard gunshots from his house when they tried to arrest him.
Police showed up to Swanson’s home in Ossipee in November 2019 to arrest him after he allegedly phoned in threats to police, according to a report from the attorney general’s office. But he refused to come out and they heard gunshots coming from the house. The report said Swanson came out with a loaded rifle, and that’s when the three troopers fired, wounding him in the shoulder, forearm, and buttocks. He survived. No one else was hurt.
The attorney general’s office determined in 2020 that the troopers were legally justified in their use of deadly force.
Washington
2 active-duty Marines plead guilty to Capitol riot charges
Two men who were active-duty members of the Marines Corps when they stormed the U.S. Capitol pleaded guilty on Monday to riot-related criminal charges.
Joshua Abate and Dodge Dale Hellonen are scheduled to be sentenced in September by U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes. Both pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia.
Many Capitol rioters are military veterans, but only a few were actively serving in the armed forces when they joined a mob’s attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
A third active-duty Marine, Micah Coomer, also was charged with Abate and Hellonen. Coomer pleaded guilty to the same misdemeanor charge in May and is scheduled to be sentenced by Reyes on Aug. 30.
All three men face a maximum sentence of six months of imprisonment.
As of May 19, the Marines were still in the service. No additional information was available Monday.
David Dischley, an attorney for Abate, declined to comment on his client’s guilty plea. An assistant public defender who represents Hellonen didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Authorities arrested the three men in January: Abate at Fort Meade, Maryland; Coomer in Oceanside, California; and Hellonen in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
Witnesses stationed with Coomer at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia and with Hellonen at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina identified them in videos of the Jan. 6 riot, according to the FBI. A third witness — also a Marine — identified Abate from footage captured inside the Capitol, the FBI said.
During a June 2022 for his security clearance, Abate said he and two “buddies” had walked through the Capitol on Jan. 6 “and tried not to get hit with tear gas,” according to an FBI special agent.
After the riot, Coomer posted photos on Instagram with the caption “Glad to be (a part) of history.” The angles of the photos and the caption indicated he had been inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, the FBI said. The phone number listed for Coomer in his military personal file matched the Instagram account.
Coomer drove to Washington on the morning of Jan. 6 from his military post in Virginia. He attended then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally with Abate and Hellonen before they entered the Capitol. Inside the Rotunda, they placed a red “Make America Great Again” hat on a statute before taking photos of it, prosecutors said. The three men spent nearly an hour inside the Capitol before leaving.
Less than a month after the riot, Coomer told another Instagram user that he believed “everything in this country is corrupt.”
“We honestly need a fresh restart. I’m waiting for the boogaloo,” he wrote, according to the FBI.
When the other user asked what that term meant, Coomer wrote, “Civil war 2.”
“Boogaloo” movement supporters use the term as slang for a second civil war or collapse of civilization. They frequently show up at protests armed with rifles and wearing Hawaiian shirts under body armor.
